Saturday Review: Summer Is for Lovers

Summer Is for Lovers

By Jennifer McQuiston

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: 

September 24, 2013

Caroline Tolbertson is not yet in her teens when, on a deserted Brighton beach, she first encounters David Cameron, a troubled young army officer who changes his mind about suicide almost too late. Thanks to her late father’s unconventional approach to rearing daughters, Caroline is an experienced swimmer who is able to guide the young soldier to safety. Keeping silent about the rescue is in both their best interests, and so they part with no one else knowing about the incident. But David, second son of a Scots baron, retains a vivid memory of his plain but passionate young savior, and for Caroline, David becomes the “verray, parfit, gentil knight” of her dreams.

More than a decade later, the tall, gawky Caroline and her older sister, Penelope, a generally proper, bookish miss with a stammer, are on the verge of spinsterhood, both of them poor material for the stuff of their widowed mother’s dream of seeing her daughters married ladies. Caroline is all too aware of her physical and social deficiencies, and she is troubled by them since she knows a good marriage is the only way she can fulfill her promise to her father and take care of her mother, and her sister. Prompt action is vital if they are not to descend from genteel poverty into outright penury.

Caroline and David meet the second time when David accompanies his mother to Brighton for a two-week stay while she recuperates from a lingering illness.  The sea air at Brighton works its restorative powers quickly because within for days, David’s mother is engaged in matchmaking schemes to see her younger son paired with an eligible bride. Both Caroline and David are reluctant guests at a social gathering at the summer home of an English viscount whose daughter is the match David’s mother has selected for him.

David, a caretaker by nature, and Caroline’s innocence intensifies the guilt he feels about an incident in his past. He is indignant when he realizes that she is the target of the cruelty of a group of shallow, immature aristocrats, and he determines that he will do his best to open their eyes to her intelligence and unique appeal and push them into seeing her as a worthy candidate for marriage. It doesn’t take long for Davis to realize that the friendship and desire he feels for Caroline insure that there is only one man he can see as her husband, David himself.

I enjoyed McQuiston’s debut novel, but I found Summer Is for Lovers, the second book in the series, to be even better. Caroline is a delightful heroine—strong physically and emotionally, intelligent, and vulnerable. Her aptitude for swimming makes her unconventional in an original fashion, and yet she is very much a woman of her time with limited choices.  David is a decent, honorable man who made a mistake for which he cannot forgive himself. I think for most people in real life, their strengths and weaknesses are entangled, often like the opposite sides of a single coin, and so I found David a credible and appealing hero. I applaud the skill with which McQuiston shows the development of the relationship between David and Caroline. I especially appreciated the scene where David sees Caroline in her natural element, the sea, and becomes aware that she is the very opposite of the graceless, plain young woman he thought her to be.

I also liked the fact that David is the second son of a Scots baron, the lowest-ranking title in the United Kingdom and that Caroline’s father was a newspaper owner. The Brighton setting also added freshness and interest to the novel. I even approve the “villains” of the piece who are not incredibly evil but rather weak and self-absorbed and incapable of seeing the “other” with sympathy and understanding.

This book is loosely connected to What Happens in Scotland, but it is not necessary to have read that book to follow the events of Summer is for Lovers. If you haven’t yet tried Jennifer McQuiston’s books, I recommend you do so. She’s high on my list of up and comers to watch.

McQuiston said in an interview with Tracy Brogan that Dierks Bentley served as the inspiration for David Cameron and Kip Moore as the hero of her third Avon novel, Moonlight on My Mind, a March 25, 2014 release.  An author who has a proper appreciation for country music hunks is clearly a woman of insight and discriminating taste.  What country music star inspires you to imagine him—or her—as the protagonist of a romance novel?

Another Review for a July 30 Release: The Lady and the Laird

The Lady and the Laird

By Nicola Cornick

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: July 30, 2013

Lady Lucy MacMorlan is a perfect lady, a perfect daughter to her father, and a perfect sibling to her surviving brothers and sisters, but perfect Lucy harbors some secrets that would seriously jeopardize her reputation for perfection. Few people know that she was the author of a series of erotic letters she had been paid to write for her brother Lachlan and his friends, resulting in their scandalous success at their  amorous escapades. Nobody knows the reason Lucy is so devoted to the memory of her older, scholarly fiancé that she has refused to consider another suitor since his death. Nobody knows what Lucy does with the money she makes from her letter writing. It’s her need for funds that persuades Lucy against her instinct to write more letters for Lachlan. This time the letters are not for an opera dancer but for the young woman betrothed to Robert, Marquis of Methven.

Robert, Marquis of Methven, is furious that his promised bride has left him waiting at the altar and eloped with Lachlan MacMorlan. It’s not that Methven loves the girl, but he does love his land and feel responsible for those who dwell on it. Thanks to his estrangement from his grandfather, his absence from Scotland at his grandfather’s death, and the terms of a fifteenth-century treaty, he stands to lose half his ancestral lands to a man who will exploit and abuse his clansmen. Marriage to Lord Brodie’s daughter and a legitimate heir from their marriage would have fulfilled the treaty terms, but the list of other women who would satisfy those terms is nonexistent. Then his lawyer informs him that Lady Lucy MacMorlan, as a descendant of the original Earl of Cardross, will fulfill the terms as well. And Methven knows that he will make Lucy his bride, but he has no idea of the trials that await him on his journey to that goal.

Readers who like intelligent heroines will find much to like in Lucy who even as a sixteen-year-old preferred reading books to dreaming about her future husband. Who would ever imagine all that the proper daughter of a duke was learning from those books she read--erotic poetry and swordplay and all sorts of things that would later prove useful. Some may think that some of her choices suggest that she could have used more pragmatism mixed with her book learning, but people, even smart ones, do make foolish decisions when driven by their fears. And Lucy is convinced that marriage and passion and pregnancy lead to certain death, an irrational idea but an understandable one given her experience. When her love for Methven grows stronger than her fear, it’s a real test of that love’s power as well as evidence that Lucy has healed enough to leave behind the broken, terrified adolescent that she has been behind her carefully cultivated image of perfection.

Methven has the leader’s sense of responsibility for his people and the protectiveness of his woman that are conventionally primary alpha characteristics, but he delights in Lucy’s strengths and is incredibly tender when that quality is what she needs. He is also willing to admit that he is wrong. In other words, he is a complex, compelling, satisfying hero.

Cornick also provides some interesting secondary characters. Lucy’s sister Mairi and Methven’s cousin Jack are excellent foils for the protagonists and promising future leads. Lucy’s godmother is amusing, and I adored Methven’s fierce grandmother. But my favorite part of the book was the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society. I wanted to join them. I did find the villain flat, but I find that a common weakness in historical romance fiction.

The Lady and the Laird is the first of Cornick’s Scottish Brides series. I look forward to Mairi and Jack’s story, One Night with the Laird, which will be released on October 29. The story of Christina, the eldest MacMorlan sister who is already a spinster, may prove to be the most fascinating of the three.

I’m not a reader who reaches for a romance just because it’s set in Scotland, but I have read several Scottish romances recently, with mixed results. I wonder if more are being written than usual. Are you a fan of Scottish romances? Why do you think they are so much more popular than romances set in Ireland?